Showing results by narrator "Ron Butler" in All Categories

More than ever, the effective management of technology is critical for business competitiveness. For decades, technology leaders have struggled to balance agility, reliability, and security. The consequences of failure have never been greater - whether it's the healthcare.gov debacle, cardholder data breaches, or missing the boat with Big Data in the cloud. And yet, high performers using DevOps principles, such as Google, Amazon, and Netflix, are routinely and reliably deploying code into production hundreds, or even thousands, of times per day.

Seventeen-time all-star; scorer of 81 points in a game; MVP; and a shooting guard second only to Jordan in league history: Kobe Bryant is one of basketball's absolute greatest players, a fascinating and complicated character who knew when he was a mere boy that he would be better than Jordan on the court. The debate about whether he achieved that is a furious one - but Kobe has surpassed Jordan on the all-time scoring list and has only one less championship than Jordan (five to Jordan's six).

Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.

In Oakland, California, in 1966, community college students Bobby Seale and Huey Newton armed themselves, began patrolling the police, and promised to prevent police brutality. Unlike the Civil Rights Movement that called for full citizenship rights for blacks within the US, the Black Panther Party rejected the legitimacy of the US government and positioned itself as part of a global struggle against American imperialism.

This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and, in the process, helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean. 

Barrington Jedidiah Walker is 74 and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney, London, for years. A flamboyant character with a fondness for William Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father, grandfather - and also secretly gay.

For decades, American voters innocently assumed the two major political parties were equally mature and responsible governing entities, ideological differences aside. That belief is due for an overhaul: In recent years, the Republican Party has undergone an astonishing metamorphosis, one so baffling and complete that few have fully reckoned with the reality and its consequences. Republicans, simply put, have quit governing. As MSNBC's Steve Benen charts in his groundbreaking new book, the contemporary GOP has become a "post-policy party".

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge - a tradition that continues today within some black populations.

Once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy, adventure, danger, trust, and speed. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel ourselves. Tech giants are hurling us toward a shiny, happy "self-driving" future, selling utopia but equally keen to advertise to a captive audience strapped into another expensive device. Are we destined, then, to become passengers, not drivers? Why We Drive reveals that much more may be at stake than we might think.

Fasten your falx knives and grab the reins of your quadriga: Rivals 2! More Frenemies Who Changed the World is the funniest look at people who benefited the world through their hatred. This audiobook has it all: death beams, chariot races, flaming costumes, ear-munchers, party fleas, and whatever the opposite of epic poetry is.... No fact is too bizarre, no segue too surreal, and no sequitur is too non for this riotous sequel.

School principal Jonathan Madaris falls hard the moment new teacher Marilyn Bannister walks into his office. The gray-eyed beauty takes his breath away and makes him regret his school's non-fraternization policy. Still, he immediately knows Marilyn is special. And he's not letting anything stop him from getting the woman he wants. 

In The Half Has Never Been Told, historian Edward E. Baptist reveals the alarming extent to which slavery shaped our country politically, morally, and most of all, economically. Until the Civil War, our chief form of innovation was slavery. Through forced migration and torture, slave owners extracted continual increases in efficiency from their slaves, giving the country a virtual monopoly on the production of cotton, a key raw material of the Industrial Revolution.

Written by the former Executive Creative Director of Creations at Cirque du Soleil, this audiobook shows you how to step up your game, flex your creativity, and make big things happen. Whether you work independently or as part of a team, whether you're self-employed or part of an organization, and even if you think creativity isn't a part of the work that you do - this book gives you the perspective, courage, and kick-start you need to think differently about the things you do every day. 

When good girl Margo Connelly becomes Lamar "Striker" Jennings's latest assignment, she knows she's in trouble. And not just because he's been hired to protect her from an underworld criminal. The reformed bad boy's appeal is breaching all her defenses, and as the threats against her increase, Margo isn't sure which is more dangerous: the gangster targeting her, or the far-too-alluring protector tempting her to let loose.

Come sit on the veranda and pour yourself a glass of sweet tea, fortified with a slug of bourbon. Put your feet up and enjoy these stories set in Atlanta, a city sewn from the ashes, where everything that grows is both fertilized and corrupted by the past.

In Cannabis Pharmacy, expert Michael Backes offers evidence-based information on using cannabis to treat an array of ailments and conditions. He provides information on how cannabis works with the body's own system, how best to prepare and administer it, and how to modify and control dosage. This newly revised edition is now completely up to date with the latest information on the body's encannabinoid system, which is now understood to control emotion, appetite, and memory, plus much more.

"A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more." But to its residents, this derelict corner of Trinidad's capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion. 

The world has never been so unstable. Now, more than ever, we need to understand our history, learn from our mistakes, and embrace science and technology as we push into the future. In his debut book, New Thinking: The Technology and Science That Transformed Our World, Dagogo Altraide of YouTube's ColdFusion breaks down the history of gamechanger breakthroughs in the world of science and technology that have shaped our modern world and will impact the future.   

In the middle of the night, a controversial US senator is found murdered in bed in his Georgetown pied-à-terre. The police turn up only one clue: a mysterious rhyme signed "Jack and Jill" promising that this is just the beginning. Jack and Jill are out to get the rich and famous, and they will stop at nothing until their fiendish plan is carried out. No one in Washington is safe - not children, not politicians, not even the president of the United States. Only Alex Cross has the skills and the courage to crack the case.

During the 19th century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.